ASIAN-AMERICAN 'FANGS' ARE SHARP

By SALLIE HAN

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|

May 10, 1998 | 12:00 AM

Finally, someone has made a film about Asian-Americans that contains no intergenerational conflict over dating non-Asians, no pre-med or engineering students and no MSG. Instead, the new comedy-thriller "Shopping for Fangs," which opens this Friday at the Village East Cinema, features the stories of a wigged-out waitress who wears sunglasses at night, and a frustrated accountant with a serious bad-hair problem himself. "The Joy Luck Club" it isn't, and you can thank film makers Quentin Lee and Justin Lin for that. "It's important to see characters who are Asian-American," says Lee, 27, who partnered with Lin, 26, while they attended UCLA film school. "But it's also important to use them creatively.

" With "Shopping for Fangs," the first-time directors set out to break all the rules of Asian-American movie making and boldly show Asian-Americans as they have rarely been seen. Filmed in 21 days on a $100,000 budget, "Fangs" revolves around two twentysomething Angelenos trying to reconcile the strange, different and even conflicting parts of their lives. Katherine (played by Jeanne Chin) suffers from blackouts and forgets where she has been and even who she is. Then she starts receiving notes and photographs from a secret admirer a mysterious woman named Trinh. By day, Phil (played by Radmar Jao) is the kind of guy who gets picked next to last for the touch-football team at his company picnic. But by night, he becomes a different kind of animal a werewolf. Angelo Ragaza, editor of A. magazine, a Manhattan-based publication for Asian-Americans, says "Fangs" is a departure from other movies about Asian-Americans. "It's not concerned with the cliches, like the overnight immigrant success story," Ragaza says. "It's not all conflict, fighting with parents and fighting with each other.

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" In recent years, Asian-Americans have become increasingly visible on screen. Recent commercial and critical winners like "The Joy Luck Club" and "Double Happiness" proved to Hollywood that Asian-American-themed movies could attract a wider audience.